Death of Charles of Provence 41
death in the fight at Brissarthe (866) the valour of " the Maccabaeus of
Erance" opposed substantial resistance to the invaders of Anjou and
Maine.
In the affair of Lothar, neither Charles nor Hincmar would give way.
The king of Western Francia had shewn himself determined strenuously
to maintain the fight on behalf of the indissolubility of marriage, and
declared that he would hold no further intercourse with his nephew until
he should take back Theutberga. He repeated this resolution at the
interview which he had with his brother Louis at Savonnieres near
Toul (November 862), to which Lothar had sent as his representatives
several of the bishops of his kingdom. Charles accused his nephew of
being a cause of double scandal to the Christian Church by the favour he
had shewn to the guilty connexion between Baldwin and Judith, and by
marrying Waldrada without waiting for the opinion of the Pope. He
called for the assembling of a general council to pronounce definitively on
both these questions. In the end, Lothar agreed, so far as Judith's case
was concerned, but in the matter of the divorce he declared that he
would await the decision of the Pope. Charles was obliged to be content
with this reply, and to take leave of his brother, having done nothing
more than renew the treaty of peace and alliance concluded in 860 at
Coblence.
The death of Charles of Provence (£5 January 865) made little
change in the respective positions of the sovereigns. The dead man left
no children; his heirs therefore were his two brothers, for Louis II does
not appear to have recognised the treaty concluded in 858 between
Charles and Lothar II, by which the latter was to succeed to the whole of
the inheritance. Therefore the two rivals hastened to reach Provence,
each being eager to win over the magnates of the country to his own side.
The seemingly inevitable conflict was warded off, thanks to an agreement
which gave Provence, strictly so-called, as far as the Durance to the
Emperor, and to the king of Lorraine the Lyonnais and the Viennois,
that is to say the Duchy of Lyons, of which Gerard of Roussillon was
governor.
But the question of Theutberga was still not definitely settled, and
for the years that followed, it remained the subject of difficult negotia-
tions, on the one hand between the different Prankish sovereigns, and on
the other between these sovereigns and the Pope. The situation was
eminently favourable to a Pope of the character of Nicholas I, who, in
858 had taken the place of Benedict III on the papal throne. Being
petitioned to intervene at once by Theutberga, Lothar, and the
opponents of Lothar, he could take up the position of the arbiter of the
Christian world. Meanwhile, without deciding the question himself, he
resolved to hand over the settlement of it to a great council to be
held at Metz at which not only the bishops of Lorraine should be
present, but two representatives of the episcopate in each of the